


Determination

by UnrealRomance



Series: Modern Girls in Star Wars [2]
Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anakin is much older, Basically everything is the same but everything is different, F/M, Minors DNI, Minors do not interact, Modern Girl in Star Wars, like in his late twenties
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-15
Updated: 2021-01-06
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:08:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 6,908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22269187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UnrealRomance/pseuds/UnrealRomance
Summary: So basically I fell in love with Clone Wars Anakin from the version that's in 3D? But I wanna put Anakin in a universe where it might be feasible for him to never become Darth Vader or at least where it would take him longer-- basically in this one, Anakin has had an actual childhood on Tattoine before he became a Jedi.And my Modern Girl character in this one is tech-y and builds droids, so if that's something you're into, you'll like her!
Relationships: Anakin Skywalker/Original Female Character(s)
Series: Modern Girls in Star Wars [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2004112
Comments: 54
Kudos: 83





	1. Chapter 1

It took me a few days for it all to really sink in.

Also some encounters with droids who were really too well-articulated to be animatronic and wayyyy too versatile to have a pre-programmed AI like on my own planet- the level of sophistication is above and beyond.

Yes, my planet.

Because I am not _on_ Earth. In fact, Earth doesn't even exist in this universe and I know that because I checked.

The closest equivalent is like, Coruscant. Where humanity began. Along with another species we apparently shared the planet with.

Anyone who's ever wanted to go to the Star Wars universe did so because it was a fantasy. They just…didn't really see how screwed up it all was, or they did and knew they wouldn't survive but they thought… 'Hey, it's better than the monotony of my own life, right?' and I'm…

Well, I'm more in the camp of people who only really wanted to go for a weekend and then come back home. Maybe multiple times, but not like…a full move over there. I wanted to be able to peek into this world, maybe through a VR headset someday when I could finally afford one- and then just…be able to _leave_.

But here I am, on a planet in the Star Wars universe, unable to remember what brought me here and with no idea how to get back.

…hell, do I even want to put in the effort? I mean, there's a lot of war and the constant threat of death here. But it's not really that different where I'm from. I mean, we were inching closer and closer to another war or three and there were so many rights being violated and _internment_ _camps_ were starting up again-

Maybe I just want to exist in a world where all that happens _plus_ there's magic. And a chance that the space magic cops will shut it all down someday and actually get off their asses and end all suffering- even if I know it's unlikely they'll get involved in anything they're not directly forced to deal with…

And I mean, maybe things aren't really up to the level of technology they should be in some ways, but in others they're above and beyond.

Lose a limb? You can just replace it, it'll look and feel almost exactly like the one you had before!

Need to make a call across the entire flipping galaxy? Just get a ship and use the holocomm.

I mean, I don't even know the capabilities of VR gaming here, or if it even exists really, but I am curious to find out.

So maybe I'll just hang here for as long as I can, take in the sci-fi magic and enjoy the fact that I'm not back home, apathetic and depressed because there's nothing to do and…

"Oi, oi!" my Master, the honorable Dal Mathos- reaches out to halt my progress on the grinding wheel. "You're over-grinding, lass."

"Sorry, Master." Funny, I thought only Jedi went by those kinds of titles, but as it turns out, it's just a way of addressing an honored teacher. "I keep getting distracted. I don't want to ruin anything, maybe I should just work on the mold making today."

"You have molded and made molds for weeks now, lass. Time to branch out," he says. "Do me a favor and make a delivery, hey? Maybe by the time you're done, you'll have finished being distracted."

"Sure, where am I going?" I mean. I'll probably drive my speeder bike directly into a sand dune, but…whatever, right?

He tells me the address, loads me up and…I go off on a very uneventful adventure out to a moisture farm to hand off replacement parts for broken machines.

And then I do it again and again for a few hours, till nightfall.

At which point I curl up on the floor of the garage with a flashlight and start looking over the schematics I've been improving for weeks.

Some of them are for like, fantastical ideas that would never happen but that I like to dream about.

Others are cobbled-together ideas for things that I know are possible but have no idea how they work…

Like lightsabers.

I've been dropped smack-dab into the middle of the Clone Wars era. So I figured…maybe I could make a couple of sets of Lightsabers for in case I ever meet any Jedi so they can take them…to…Coruscant.

And Anakin, okay. I want them to take the Lightsabers to Anakin. Ahsoka, Obi-wan and Anakin.

But it's likely never going to happen because for one thing, how to make Lightsabers is apparently a super delicate and involved process and for another…I have nothing to work with. No blueprints, or even replicas or anything even remotely useful.

Always been an amateur tinker, but it's never been for something that…sophisticated.

So I decided to start slow with making replacement parts for things- just to get an idea for how things work in this universe and how you put things together.

It's been weeks and I have a pretty good grasp of things by now, but I still want to tinker with the higher-tech baubles.

 _Especially_ droids. I wanna make my own version of HK or R2 or something. I want to learn to build and then program a quirky droid with a special personality all their own and…

Well, I've got a bunch of schematics that I've bought off of some traders here. But they're all very…cheap, schematics. I had to haggle them down from their list prices because…not worth the paper they're printed on, really.

But they did give me ideas about how Droids work and what goes into them.

So now I'm just…designing my own. Based on what I like and what I think would be most efficient for whatever jobs might be at hand.

Obviously I'm a sucker for human-esque droids and round-bois all the same but like…my absolute favorite kind of droids are those who look so uncannily human but also don't.

Like…faces sculpted with a special plastic that makes them look human, but done in a different color like blue or red- or even have their skin flesh toned in whatever tints but give their eyes an unnatural glow and maybe make their hair be blue or green or red…

Since things aren't really that sophisticated outside of prosthetics tech…I decided to start looking into that.

And now I have a workable design for a Droid with a vagely human shape- realistic arms and legs, hands and feet- and maybe I'll program them for the kind of work a human can do but not as fast or as easy or as safe as they can?

The torso can be…I dunno…metal or rubber covered metal or…I mean I guess I could just get that synthetic skin stuff and put it on the torso and maybe over the face…

Yawning hugely, I decide it's time for bed…and then hesitate because I've been having nightmares lately…

And I really don't want that to happen tonight. They've gotten worse and more frequent as time goes by. The same thing over and over again.

Some giant monster in the desert eating someone small. A flash of red, white, blue…orange, I think.

But I can't remember their face, ever. So I shrug, decide to try and maybe remember more details this time and head off to bed.

After all, dreams can be good inspiration for things. Maybe I'll see a face I'd like to use for my Android.


	2. Chapter 2

Tattooine _sucks_ , even on the good days.

The days when the clouds are blocking out all sun but somehow everything is still lit up and hot- they're the best it gets.

And they still suck. So. Many. Balls.

Out on my speeder, making deliveries again. After a full day of helping out in the shop.

This is one of the last ones I have to make.

And I'm so hot I could keel over.

We don't have a lot of water here, so if I drink all my allotted rations for the day, I'll have nothing for the rest of my deliveries.

My master would probably say I need to put off the deliveries for tomorrow since that's my day off and I have no other deliveries then- I'll be able to make them in the morning, drink tomorrow's water rations while I'm doing that and then spend the rest of the day just relaxing.

But I want a _whole_ day to work on my droid designs.

I just found out they make prosthetics for every part of your body that are like the ones Luke and Anakin had for their hands.

Always wondered why Darth Vader and Malak from kotor always had these prosthetics that looked so unwieldy instead of getting skin grafted on that was superficial with machinery underneath…

But after looking into it…

Well, it turns out that those kind of Prosthetics are the really pricey ones, cause they actually give greater functionality in more ways than the other ones.

You can either look the way you used to, or you can have better parts that look out of place because they're not covered in skin.

Nobody's figured out how to do both, yet.

I myself am not that particular kind of engineer. I learn how stuff works, I fix it up, design new things- but they're all based on designs of other things.

I'm nowhere near qualified enough to design and invent a whole different framework for medical technology.

So I figure, I can just take the parts that look human, or well….that look like a bipedal human-like species- and I can figure out whether or not they'd have enough strength, speed and articulation to get around like a living person…

Or if I'd have to add some stuff into the design to make them…more functional.

' _Ugh, where am I?_ '

I slow to a not-so-graceful stop outside a moisture farm I've never been to before, and have to check my maps and the delivery paperwork- or rather, flimsiwork- just to be certain I'm in the right place.

Never been to this place before…and yet somehow…it feels…familiar?

"Whaddya want!" a man walks out to shout at me from the interior of the farmhouse. Or well, one of them, I guess?

Those other buildings are for family residences and maintenance of stuff so I guess that _is_ the only main house. It's in the middle of the building formations and all.

I raise a hands in the air to show I'm unarmed and shout back, "delivery!"

The man's countenance changes from cagey to friendly almost in an instant and he walks out to meet me as I get off my speeder. "That our parts?"

"Yessir," I reply. And weave a little on my feet. Ugh.

I decide, fuck it- reach into my 'saddle' bag and take one single swig of my water canteen. Then I put it back before carefully unloading the parts.

He stands and waits patiently for me to finish and then helps me lift them off the back of the speeder. "Help me bring it inside and my wife will take it from there."

So we carry the fuck-off huge trunk into the house, one grunting, grueling step at a time. And then we set it down on the floor.

Someone's hand lands on my shoulder. "Oh dear, you poor thing. You look like you're about to keel over!"

Turning to reassure whoever it is, because that's what you do when you're on a job- I get dizzy.

Everything blurs around the edges and I have to take a step and throw my hands out to keep myself from falling. Unluckily for the other person, they're what I take hold of to stay upright. Luckily for me, they're strong enough _to_ hold me upright.

"Oh my, Cliegg, get her some water!" their voice calls out.

That name sounds so familiar and unfamiliar at the same time that it actually makes me _more_ nauseous. "Ugh…hot…"

"I know, I know," the voice says, petting my hair. "Hold on, dear. Come sit over here. Slowly, move slowly."

The very nice woman attached to the voice, sits me down on a nearby sofa and gets me a bucket. I hold it between my feet and put my head between my knees to breathe.

The man from before- Cliegg, right? -he brings me a cool glass of water. "On the house, for your trouble!"

God, that's like giving somebody…I don't fucking know, something really expensive that you'll never see again. Fuck my brain is cooked.

I gulp a little of the water, but stop when it hits my stomach and breathe through the nausea. Sipping more of it as my spell starts to die down, I take note of the woman in the room.

She sees me staring and smiles, taking the empty glass from my hand- when the hell did _that_ happen -and introduces herself.

"I see you're feeling better, dear. I'm Shmi and this is my husband Cliegg- if you _ever_ have trouble on your rounds again, just feel free to come on by and get yourself a glass of water. We have plenty for someone who's gonna be deliverin' us goods and doin' hard work out in the hot Tattooine suns all day."

I can't take anymore of this. I hurl directly into the bucket- but thankfully all I've got in me right now is water and a few ration bars.

Shmi smooths her hand over my back like every mother ever has done in the history of forever and Cliegg rushes off to get me more water.

And I think to myself… ' _God, I'm so fucked._ '


	3. Evelyn POV, Anakin POV

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I set a fucking reminder to go off on wednesdays and saturdays and it went off yesterday, I knew it went off and I STILL FORGOT TO UPDATE.

"It's so beautiful!" Shmi gushes over my schematics. "There are problems in a few places that I can see, but the design itself is so- how brilliant, you!"

I have to laugh very softly when she reaches out and jostles my shoulder. "Thank you. I thought, since you repair and maintain and even build machinery on the Moisture farm out here…that you might be able to tell me how to fix the problems I was sure were there, but that I couldn't see."

She nods and grabs up a new sheet of blueprint paper- turning on the table light and laying the thin sheet over my original designs. "Right here you'll have articulation problems. Certainly you want to protect this joint, but if you use anything hard like plasteel, it'll have trouble moving its wrists…and knees, I suppose. I didn't notice you'd done that at all its joints."

Carefully and meticulously, she goes over each joint and draws the mechanism on my original plans- then draws plans next to it that involve a lot of synthetic flesh being hardened on the inside with something called Plastiflesh?

"What's Plastiflesh?" I ask.

She hums as she draws, "oh it's liquidised synthetic flesh that you use to patch spots where the flesh has come off on your synthetic parts if you can't get to a doctor to repair it before it might become a problem. Infections can still get in- and on a planet like this, a little sand in all the wrong places could very well destroy some of the very delicate inner mechanisms…but if you coat the Synthflesh with a layer of Plastiflesh on the inside, it'll harden up and offer some protection. It's supposed to harden over the hole in a breach and keep absolutely anything from coming out, but…"

"How do you know so much about this stuff?" I ask.

"Oh my son, Anakin, he has a prosthetic just like the ones you're using here," she gestures at the arm on the design.

"Oh?" I ask. "Explains how you know more than I do, but I did my research…why wasn't information on Plastiflesh available?"

"Oh, my son invented it, it's very new," she says. With all the harried air of a woman with a son whose genius is so commonplace to her that relating it to other people is simply an exchange of information now, rather than a chance for proud bragging.

Or maybe she's just always talked about him like that.

"Your son sounds…amazing," I say carefully. "What else has he invented?"

She looks up at me with surprise but then beams. "I can show you his portfolio! He's not shy about it, so don't worry about that," she says.

Rushing off, she sets her pens down on the blueprint paper and goes rustling about in another room in the house.

I fidget for a moment, wondering if I'm breaking some kind of cross-universe rules by asking about someone I _know_ I shouldn't be messing around with.

But what could it hurt to just…ask his mother? I mean, she's not him. He'll never need to know about me. Right?

* * *

Anakin POV

"Yeah mom, I know, it's nice that you're so excited but-"

" _Anakin,_ _ **please**_ _, she's so talented!_ " my mother stares at me with large eyes, in miniature on my holo.

"Mooom," I groan. "I know you're a good judge of character and talent, especially where it concerns machinery. But I can't just do something like that. The Council is already kind of suspicious of me just because I keep the funds I make from inventing."

" _Then give it to me and_ _ **I**_ _will do it,_ " she says. " _You cannot very well be held responsible for what someone does with your money once you've given it away. And you still have familial responsibilities. No one would think it strange that you sent your mother a loan to fix a broken moisture vaporator._ "

"Mom, I love you," I say with some amusement. "So fine, I'll send you the money. It can't be connected back to me, understand?"

" _Absolutely!_ " she beams. " _I love you Ani. I'm so proud of you for making it so far. And now you will foster the growth of someone else who needs their big break. No matter what the Jedi say, your love for others will always lead you to compassionate acts._ "

And then mom cuts out, our two minutes up.

Can't really speak to her for longer than that, or I risk the signal being picked up by someone in the Temple. Or wherever it is I'm currently staying.

Sure, they could pick up on it before then, but to triangulate her position, it takes some time.

Two minutes is the minimum of time it would take to do that. So, two minutes is all I can ever really talk to my mother for in one day.

She calls as often as possible and I call her when I have a problem I need help solving…but never for more than two minutes and never more than once a day.

…it's not enough. I need my mother for more than two minutes once a day.

I need to tell her all about the new ideas I have and about my new Padawan- not just her name, but her personality and best and worst traits. I need to tell her about Obi-Wan, my master and how he's instructing me and what I agree with and what I don't and for what reasons.

It's never been just me, for my whole life. It's always been me and my mother. Then me and my mother and stepfather and stepbrother.

Also me and my podracer crew and me and…anyone at hand, really.

But now I'm not _allowed_ to have friends. Can't get too attached to people, or I get the disapproving look that Obi-Wan seemed to have mastered after five minutes of knowing me.

It was touch and go for a while when I started inventing things and getting checks for creating them. Apparently Jedi hoarding wealth are destined to fall to the dark side.

Considering I only use money to further my ambition toward creating more and more new inventions, I was able to swing a conditional account that would only be allowed to stay open as long as I used it for my projects and maybe the occasional generosity for people who needed funds to keep hospitals going or for somebody who needed surgery.

I had to argue for TWO hours to get them to give me that little proviso.

You'd think Jedi would be more open to using your money to help people who need it more than you do.

Ever since I got here, the Jedi have seemed strange, though, so it's no surprise they make no sense every now and then.

"Anakin!" Obi-Wan calls from nearby. "Ahsoka has arrived, we must go now."

Sighing to myself, I get up off the platform I'd been sitting on and force jump across the chasm between us.

Landing easily on the ground not far from my master, I trot quickly into a slow walk and he glides beside me. Ever the picture of a proper Jedi…

…well, until he isn't.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys, if you'd like to help me out, please go look at this post on Tumblr: https://unrealromance.tumblr.com/post/611158900421591041/hey-so-i-need-your-help

"You've gotten some of the parts!" Shmi gushes as I walk into her house with a prosthetic arm.

"Only one," I reply forlornly. "But I figured since you're so excited about it, you might want to know what progress I made in modifying the original. I finished the modifications we talked about, yesterday. It should be good to integrate into the whole once we get more parts."

Shmi offered to fund my project but I couldn't let her do that. It was just…a project. For fun, not for profit. Even if I _could_ make Droids that were almost true to life- I wouldn't sell them. They'd be people who just happened to be made of synthetic materials.

If it's possible, this made Shmi even _more_ determined to fund my project.

I made her a deal. If she wanted in on the project for fun, we could work together and pool our resources- but I didn't want to use her money for my project that I didn't intend to see any profit off of.

"You said I could buy half the parts," she says. "So I took the liberty of getting the Torso first. As it will be what we plug everything into and it will be necessary for testing articulation and flexibility."

Yikes, that had to have cost way more than an arm. "Shmi…"

"Oh let me have my fun, too," she says. "I don't want to have to wait a year to buy a single part when it could only take me a week to order and receive it."

Even if I weren't as reluctant as I am to use her money, I'd at least have to act like it. She's been so depressed and distracted lately when I'm not around- thinking about Anakin out in the war. Or so her husband told me when he called.

He practically begged me to let Shmi buy all the parts and do the work with me, so she could take her mind off things. Apparently the money itself was a windfall that they needed to do something with because they had to submit very strict reports to the Tattoine authorities on their gains and losses and having too much of one might guarantee a restriction of the other.

People with too many losses are considered low-priority with repairs and too many gains means that person is producing more than the others in their region and don't require repairs as much as others either.

Basically being too good or too bad at moisture collection can mean that the repair crews don't think you're worth going out to as much for one reason or another.

Being middling is how you stay on the active list. Which is bullshit because then people just exploit that rule, and they shouldn't be able to- shouldn't _have_ to.

But it's how shit works around here and people experiencing windfalls either scramble to spend the money so nobody can tell they ever had it- or they just save it up and deal with being on the low priority list so they can have some extra credits in case the worst should happen at some point.

So pretending to be reluctant, whether I am or not- and I _am_ -would mean she's focused on _convincing_ me rather than anything else.

"You didn't make the modifications without me, did you?" I ask.

She gestures at me to follow her. "Of course not! I had no idea if our modifications would work the way they were intended or not, and if they didn't and I had to modify the designs- you wouldn't have been there. That doesn't seem fair."

At the end of the day, it's not really a matter of making the parts work together- they would do that anyway.

The modifications are for the purposes of making the movements as human as possible while being computed by a droid-like brain. There are brain implants we can sort of frankenstein together to make a working brain, but…well, they're used to working with organic tissue and stuff.

So not only does everything need to be modified to work only with synthetic flesh, synapses and muscles and whatnot- it all needs to be modified so that the brain works just like a human one as much as possible. And so the body responds to it like it is.

If we had the money, equipment and know-how- we could build our own human brain from donated tissue, copy the neural pathways and _transfer_ those pathways over to the implants where they'd each take on the role of a different lobe of the brain and work perfectly the way an organic brain would.

We couldn't have done that back in my universe. And here it's still an incredibly risky and difficult procedure that also tends to cost millions of credits to make work.

But just knowing it's _possible_ is just…amazing.

"I think maybe we should make more adjustments here," I point to the lungs and heart that she bought along with all the other parts to go into the torso. We're putting it together piece by piece. "It's not necessary for this droid to have air or blood so we'll have to find something else it needs and put the machinery where the heart and lungs and other organs should go."

"Or we could _use_ them to deliver something else into its system," she says. "Perhaps lubricant could be funneled through its veins and we could write a program where it is released at any point it is experiencing articulation problems with."

"No, that should be the larger veins- they run through all the body but they're separate from the smaller veins- or could be if we separate them. There's a whole conduit here we could use to attach to the lungs- every time it takes a breath, it could cause the lungs to expand and therefore pump the lubricant when it's necessary. But the other system could be run by the heart, the smaller veins. It could carry that fuel we have to use- he could drink it and his stomach could be made to transfer it to his heart. The lubricant could be injected as he wouldn't need it nearly as often."

"He would ingest nutrition, just like a human!" Shmi squeals excitedly. "Oh I miss this! Ani and I always used to do this together."

I smile at her excitement and think of Anakin, hoping he's safe.

Hoping that because of the changes here, the differences…it might mean that he's going to be alright. That he might not even be the chosen one.

Here's to hoping.


	5. Anakin POV

It's been a while, and I am…beyond excited.

"A whole month off!?" I ask Obi-Wan as we walk down the corridors of the Jedi Temple. "For what?"

"Firstly because you are still injured, Anakin," he says with a sideways glance. "And secondly, because you won a battle that may have a pivotal impact on the war. The council feels you have been working too much and must find your center again before re-engaging in combat. It is only wise."

"Well," I start. "I don't _want_ a month off _now_." Less exciting to know everyone thinks you enjoy fighting too much and want to ship you off on a retreat somewhere to make you calm down. Like you're some kind of dangerous animal.

"Oh I know," He replies. "You _never_ want what's actually good for you, Anakin. Trust the council this time."

"I'm not a dog, you know," I say.

"I know Anakin," he replies.

"There's not any chance, however small that they're sending me away because they don't trust me?" I ask.

"Anakin," he stops and turns to me and I stop to look back at him. "Trust is earned. If you haven't earned it, that is not the failing of the Jedi Council. Believe me, you are not the only person they micromanage."

I huff and cross my arms. "I'm the only person they _constantly_ micromanage. Everyone else gets a reprieve because they're so focused on keeping me in line."

"Yes," Obi-Wan says and steps past me. "Thank you for that."

Shaking my head and snorting at that response, I walk back to my room, the opposite direction of where Obi-Wan is going. I need to make a call and I need to make it in privacy.

Sucks that calling my own _mother_ would be frowned upon so hard that I have to do things like this. But well, I haven't made my daily call yet and mom is probably worried anyway. Might as well let her know I'm coming home for a month ahead of time. I know she'll be as happy to see me as I will be to see her.

My room's private enough, at least for a short call like I usually make to my mother. No one should bother me.

It's a sparsely decorated room, for the most part. The Jedi disapprove of things like bright color- and I guess I don't really mind it. I lived in a world of dull browns and bright tan and gray, maybe. It's familiar. Comfortable.

Even though remembering the times I got sand in my clothes is unpleasant and even thinking about that shade of tan can make me shudder- I like the beige and brown color schemes of most of our robes.

Bright colors don't feel like they belong. Like they're unnatural. I've seen enough green planets to know they're perfectly natural somewhere else. I just…guess they're not for me.

I like reds. Deep reds. So that's what's all over my room. Red blankets on the bed, red curtains over the window- red painted shapes on the wall when I get bored.

Picking up my personal communicator, the one I tweaked just a bit so it'd be harder to track my transmissions- I sit on my bed and hit the frequency and code I need to contact my mother.

" _Anakin!_ " she greets me with enthusiasm once she picks up. " _Evelyn, come and- oh. She's slipped out the back. I suppose she is very pressed for time._ "

"It's okay mom, I'll meet her when I come to visit. I've got a month off and I'll be arriving in a few days," I say. "Remember the usual story?"

" _Of course I do! Oh I can't wait for you to see what we've built! The arm and torso are connected and we're still figuring out the innards of course, but if you could bring a leg so we could get started on that, it would be appreciated!_ "

I huff in amusement at my mother's enthusiasm and nod. "I'll bring you one, and then I'll take a good hard look at those schematics."

" _Only as long as Evelyn is there, she's the mastermind behind it so I don't want to step on her toes or anything,_ " she says. " _I have to make sure Threepio has been keeping your room clean. I'll tell him you're coming, he'll be so excited!_ "

Chuckling at the mental image of Threepio holding up a welcome home sign like he did when I first came home from the Jedi, I respond, "I'll see you when I touch down then, mom. Love you."

" _I love you, Ani,_ " she cuts the transmission with a smile and I have something to look forward to.

Moving to put down my holocomm, I flinch at the twinge of pain in the middle of my lower back.

" _Master_?" Ahsoka's voice comes from the other side of my door. She must've hit the intercom. " _Are you in there?_ "

Walking over and unlocking the door, it springs open to admit my padawan.

"Do _you_ know why the council just gave me a month off?" she asks and walks over to hop on my bed and cross her legs under her in meditation pose.

I chuckle and hit the door mechanism, joining her and curling into the same position. It's more comfortable than any other position for me now. "The council thinks I like fighting too much and are overreacting to a small injury."

"Oh," she says. Smiling. "Thought _I_ was the one getting in trouble. That's a relief."

I huff and whap her in the arm. "Alright Snips, nobody likes a wise guy."

"Isn't the point of Jedi training to _become_ a wise guy?" she grins. And then it falters. "Wow. I just realized I have no idea what to do with all this free time. I could…learn something, I guess? What can you learn in a month?"

I get an idea then, and because I can justify by saying 'Ahsoka needs more training in mechanics and I was going to go and look over a promising mechanical invention' I ask, "wanna come home with me and meet my mother?"


	6. Chapter 6

"Yipe!" I yelp as I accidentally almost burn myself with my welding tool.

"Alright, we're taking a break," Shmi announces. "I've heard you yelp like that at least three times this afternoon."

I _really_ don't want to stop working, but my hands are killing me, so fuck it. I can find something else to do, right? I downloaded all those holonovels or whatever to my datapad, I should get on those.

"Come with me, I want to show you something," Shmi takes my hand before I can pick up my datapad and rushes me through the house.

She's like a little girl sometimes, picking up and running off, it's an endearing trait- especially in a mother. You know her kids got played with and had a good time.

Or kid, rather. In this case.

It's so great that in this universe, Anakin got to grow up with her, apparently. The whole prophecy or whatever might be off now. Maybe he never _will_ become Darth Vader.

…maybe it's inevitable and I'm just believing what I want to believe.

For right now, it's not my problem and I don't _have_ to think about it.

But then she steers me into a room I've never been in before. A room covered wall-to-wall with technological baubles and half-finished machines with a tidily kept bed that obviously hasn't been slept in- and I nearly have a heart attack when I realize whose room I'm in.

"Ani sent me these just yesterday, don't be angry," she says.

And then she pulls a package of body parts out from under his bed.

I watch in stunned silence as she opens the package and lays out the parts. Especially because those parts include all the parts _in-between_ the other parts. Not just the legs and the arms like I'd been expecting- but the hip and thigh parts that were in-between them as well.

And a head. There's a head. And all the throat and shoulder and whatever parts we were missing.

It was the rest of the whole ass human body we needed.

"What…" I say as I walk over and touch the arm. It feels like a cold dead body. That's surreal. That's also incredibly fucking cool, though.

"Ani sent them over," she says. "It's based upon your own designs. I persuaded him to invest in them."

I really shouldn't be weirded out or insulted or angry or anything positive either until I figure out if this is normal here. The laws can sometimes be screwy and the culture is alien to me, no matter how human these people might be.

"I only asked him to bring a leg or two with him," she frets. "But he probably got bored…"

"It's not like I'm angry," I say. "I just hate taking advantage of other peoples' generosity, is all. I could've collected half these parts on my own, slowly over time and then modified them myself."

"Of course," Shmi agrees. "But it's likely going to need modifying from the base designs to fit with ours- or ours will to fit with these. I think he had all this lying around, he tends to work on prosthetics quite a lot. I think he only tweaked these enough to fit your designs, it isn't as though he built them up this way. It's unlike him to waste."

That's…actually incredibly cool and it makes my insides squirm with fangirlish admiration, I mean- Anakin Skywalker was always great.

It was near the end when he was being twisted up by Sidious that he became…not great. Became Vader.

Before then, he was maladjusted but kind. Sweet. Caring. Righteous.

"Oh, does he sell them?" I ask.

"In a way," she replies. "He sells the designs and updates in hardware and software to medical research companies who then sell them to people who need them. He'd prefer to give them all away, but he needs money to keep working on more."

The eternal dilemma. Be a good person right now one hundred percent and bankrupt yourself or be a tiny bit selfish so you can continue to be a good person in the future.

To most people that's an easy choice. I still haven't really come to a conclusion on it, myself.

"Well…let's start putting pieces together and figuring out how they should be modified, then," I say.

"Wonderful! And then when Ani gets here, you two can talk about the designs together," she says.

Ughhh. Why do I have to meet him?

Having a crush on a character's past self who was filled with righteous fervor and knowing he was going to turn evil- it's a dilemma. Though to be frank, Anakin wasn't so much 'evil' as 'empty'. Everything he'd ever loved or wanted was stolen away from him. It was partially his own fault, but he was a young man being seduced to the dark side by a paternal figure he thought he could trust.

Back in my own world, kids could be radicalized so easily. Some would snap out of it, but…it was usually due to extenuating circumstances somehow.

Sighing deeply, I pick up the entire box with all the pieces in it and move it into the living area where Shmi's worktable was set up after the first few times I came over. Apparently her husband liked using the garage for his own work, so she wanted to stay out of his way.

They have the nicest marriage, I swear to god.

Shmi isn't afraid of him, and he isn't domineering. They're both so considerate of each other. And Shmi's other son, the stepson, I haven't really met yet. But I've heard from Shmi that he's quiet and tends to prefer keeping to himself.

' _That's the uncle that Luke grows up with,_ ' just occurs to me out of nowhere and I have to beat down all the weird feelings of epic-ness that it gives me.

It isn't at all like anything to do with fictional characters anymore. The aliens, the humans, the animals and the planets- I've experienced them all first hand now.

It's like going to your hometown and seeing everyone grouped around a new statue that's meant to commemorate something that you're super excited about. Like the first Abolitionist was born there or something.

You know their name, you know their lives- or in this case, their future. And it's just…kind of overwhelming.

Shmi and I work for hours on connecting all the parts, frankenstein-ing together a working brain and nervous system with implants and wires…

And we eventually get to the part of the night where I have to leave, but Shmi keeps putting parts in my hands.

Until it's basically halfway to dawn and the whole thing is put together, but I have work tomorrow.

"You can stay here!" Shmi insists.

"No, I really can't," I deny and slowly edge out the door. "I'll come back to run tests with you later, thanks for everything, I've got work tomorrow, bye."

My ramble was too long and sounded like I was dipping out forever, but to be honest how the hell could I stay in her house knowing who'd be coming to visit?

Let's just hope our paths don't cross…or don't cross a _lot_ , I guess. Tatooine might be huge, but the traversable, safe areas are NOT.

Walking past each other on the street is okay. Just let it be that and only that. _Please_.

**Author's Note:**

> Please remember to leave a review!
> 
> Reviews remind me that my stories exist and also give me motivation to finish them. You might think that's being dramatic, but eh...I've got depression brain so bad I can barely remember yesterday.
> 
> Even if your review is just filled with emojis, of course it'll be appreciated.
> 
> And I LOVE long reviews, no matter how long-- so don't feel like you're bugging me, I promise you aren't.
> 
> Critique is also allowed but please keep it to technical problems like grammar and spelling and stuff like that-- or correcting my canon names usage because sometimes I get names mixed up-- cause I've gotten people giving me concrit on things that are just personal opinions and that is not really that helpful.
> 
> You can of course tell me if you think a part is dragging on or if you'd take out an action sequence or something because that scene felt out of place. I love to hear things like that.
> 
> But if it's not objective critique, it's not very helpful.
> 
> EX:  
> "I don't like Ahsoka and therefore hate that you've included her in your story" is not objective critique or even personal critique on a story element, it's just expecting me to cater to your personal tastes and I can't do that for everyone.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
